Graduated with a master's degree in business administration in France, with many years of experience in senior financial management, one day in 2017, Ms. Nguyen Huong Lan decided to change direction and open a small foreign language children's bookstore.

This turning point has deep roots in Lan's childhood when she was passionate about reading books.

A Book Lover's Little Bookstore

Those were summers filled with happiness as little Lan explored the vast world through the pages of books. During the summers when she didn’t have to go to school, Lan stayed at the Hanoi Library, reading one book after another. The happiness of the book-scented childhood years followed Lan forever.

After getting married and having children, she still kept the habit of reading and building a reading culture in the family, still maintaining the connection with books by working as a collaborator in translating books. She translated Little Nicolas and some works by Marc Levy, Guillaume Musso...

But her children, like many other children of the same age, are not fond of reading. Sad to see that her children do not read much, Ms. Lan realized that this is a common sadness of many parents.

Seeing that her child did not like to read many Vietnamese books but was interested in English books, she always took advantage of business trips abroad to buy foreign books for her child.

These books were not only expensive but also very heavy to carry home. In Vietnam, foreign language books are often priced many times higher than the cover price. She thought of a way to invite mothers to pool orders to buy foreign language books for their children at a better price. But this was more complicated to manage than she thought.

In 2017, during a business trip to Hong Kong, Lan accidentally stumbled upon a foreign language bookstore that sold only English children's books. She was fascinated by it. She had the idea of ​​opening such a bookstore in Vietnam, first to serve her own children's needs, then to serve mothers who had the same needs as her. Owning a small bookstore was a beautiful dream she had nurtured in her heart since childhood.

She timidly brought up the idea of ​​opening a foreign language bookstore for children to the culturalist Huu Ngoc - who was her mother's "boss" when he called for many foreign funds to sponsor cultural projects in Vietnam. Unexpectedly, "Uncle Huu Ngoc" immediately supported her.

As a book lover and person who values ​​literature, Mr. Huu Ngoc thinks that opening a bookstore like this in Hanoi is beneficial not only for the family but also for society, and should be done. When he heard that Ms. Lan wanted to open a bookstore, he encouraged her to do it right away and offered to support her by transferring his office to her to use as a bookstore, and he would move upstairs.

So the small bookstore was born, in the overwhelming happiness of a mother who loved books and also wanted to build that love for her children and other children.

"Book family" of Ms. Lan

During the COVID-19 period, many businesses are struggling, including books, but strangely, her small foreign language bookstore is still selling steadily online. In times of difficulty and chaos, do people seek the peace and hope that books and knowledge bring? Lan's family is the same.

Those difficult times were the precious years her family spent together around books. More than ever, Lan was grateful for books. She decided to quit her job completely, devote herself to her small bookstore and raise a family that loved books.

"Selling books is not a way to get rich. But when people reach a stable life, they want to do something meaningful. First, it is meaningful for their children, then it is meaningful for the community," Ms. Lan shared about her bold decision to quit her "hot" job to enjoy her small bookstore.

I don’t know if it’s out of goodwill for herself and the community that Lan’s small bookstore has grown. Now she not only sells children’s books but also serves the reading needs of all family members.

The small room at The Gioi Publishing House was no longer enough to meet the needs of customers, so her InBook bookstore was moved to a new, more spacious location. But she said her greatest success in opening the bookstore was that her children became more interested in books and reading.

Her eldest daughter just graduated from high school, reads a lot and is the one who chooses books that young people like to read for her mother to buy and sell.

Her children help her choose books, and her husband also helps her with the bookstore. Lan's bookstore becomes another home for the family, a "book family".

It was not easy to choose to step back and slow down the pace of life with a small bookstore whose main purpose was to instill a love of books in her children, but up to now, Ms. Lan is happy with her bold choice of the past.